The Affect of Twitter

Twitter has revolutionized the way humans communicate, especially politicians or celebrities. It's hard to believe, but look at the current U.S. President, Donald Trump. The man is constantly bashed for the amount of times he tweets, however it gives the President a direct channel to communicate with the American people. There are 262 million International users, so not EVERYONE has an account, but the President's tweets are heard by media outlets, which they then amplify the presidents messages (tweets) to the American people via television.

Market Watch

Although Twitter only allows you to produce 280 characters, it allows businesses to speak directly to their consumers. A great example would be a company that has to put out a "recall" or just has to clarify a misunderstanding to their customers. Twitter allows the company or even the CEO of a company to reply straight to their consumers.











It might sound like 280 characters aren't that much, but they do have a strong impact on society. A great example would be Elon Musk. Musk tweeted about the stock market and it went absolutely viral. This not only brought laughter to his fans and free publicity to the world. Twitter is a platform for people to get a message out and to respond to their fans and critics.

"the stock is so high"

The Printing Press

This week, in my marketing class, we are discussing about innovations and inventions. Looking at a chart in our class textbook (Principles of Marketing and Personal Selling, Edited by Michael Sahagun), it shows the "Most Important Innovations in History (Since the Wheel). The #1 most important innovation is the Printing Press.

What exactly is a Printing Press?
A Printing Press is a mechanical device that allows ink to be pressed onto a piece of cloth or paper, creating a message. This paves way for mass production of ink on uniforms and ink on paper creating newspaper and books. No one actually knows when the first printing press was invented or who exactly invented it, however the oldest known printed text came from China in the first millennium A.D. But around 1440, in Germany, a man by the name of Johannes Gutenberg innovated the 150 year old "printing press" and by 1450, he had perfected a printing machine that would be the ready to use commercially. This was known as the Gutenberg Press.
 (https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/printing-press#section_5)

I agree that this is one of the finest and most important innovations since the wheel, because it was the start of mass communication across Europe and eventually the world. Even to this day, new paper companies use machine such as the Printing Press to create their product. However, nowadays they cost up to 78 million dollars.


(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_press)

Facebook v. Fake News

(https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/top-fake-news-of-2016)

Facebook has always been so popular from the moment it was created. It practically birthed social media which came with Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, YouTube, etc. Even to do this day, Facebook remains at the top of popularity amongst other social media platforms. According to Buffer, within the marketing library, it states that Facebook is the #1 platform for businesses to consider for their brand. Writer, Alfred Lua, has conducted research to find  that there are 2.23billion MAU (Monthly Active Users). However, recently within the past years Facebook has struggled to combat Fake News, especially at the time of the 2016 Election.
(https://buffer.com/library/social-media-sites)

Ever since learning that there was fake news across Facebook during the 2016 Election, Facebook has worked towards identifying Fake News or any type misinformation on its platform and eliminating it from its site. However, recently people are starting to identify that a loophole exists within the system. This loophole allows iniquitous users to get around its strategy to stop fake news. To be fair, Facebook has done a lot to combat fake news and accounts that spread misinformation, and reports have shown that is working, however this loophole still exists which means theres a lot more work to do.

Mashable, a Scottish-American news website, technology and social media blog, has discovered an old glitch that still exists, but specifically Facebook Groups. This glitch allows Facebook Pages to simply produce and spread false news and misinformation by a feature that was antecedently shut down about 2 years ago, Editable Link Previews.

(https://mashable.com/article/facebook-loophole-fake-news-link-preview/)

(https://mashable.com/article/facebook-loophole-fake-news-link-preview/)

Link Previews are the "embeds" that appear when you post a link on FB. Normally, they contain a "large thumbnail, the main URL where the link is from, the title of the post, and a short description of the article". However in a private FB Group, Writer Matt Binder, came across a fellow FB user. who explained how he discovered a weird glitch that still allowed Facebook Pages to edit link preview metadata. Like I stated before, this feature was apparently shutdown, completely, about one year ago.


I personally believe that Facebook will fix these major issues as they always have in the past, but I truthfully believe that it is the publics duty to hold Facebook accountable and call it out when they are in the wrong, because if there are not repercussions from this issue, Facebook won't care to do anything about it. But I do believe that attacking the Fake News issue on Facebook is the start of ending the spread of Fake News. Back in the olden days, fake news/propaganda would be spread through physical papers or pamphlets, but now with the rise of social media and technology it makes it much more dangerous. But I do believe that we will fix this issue, but it will never end 100%. Society and our institutions will have to be constantly adapting and paying attention to Fake News and Misinformation.

History and Workings of The U.S. Supreme Court

The United States Supreme Court has always been known as the "highest judicial court in a country or state", and even when learned at a young age you are taught to value and respect the highest court in the land. This isn't just preached by historians and politicians, but by the American people and this is because the Supreme Court decides legal cases that directly affect the American people by interpreting the 200 year old document, The U.S. Constitution.

Politicians are frequently arguing about the constitution, but within the Supreme Court, politics is put aside. After watching these two videos discussing the Supreme Court, it showed me the respect and honor each Supreme Court Justice had for one another, because at the end of the day they all knew that their views came out of logical reasoning and most importantly "good faith", and not political tendencies. Listening to Former Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O'Connor, talk about her first day entering the conference room showed me that these positions of power are not only valued by the American People, but even by the Justices themselves. They understood the power of their role and most importantly they didn't let it affect them. The Justices talked about how they worked in collaboration with one another and that allowing everyone to speak just once was really important, because it gave everyone equal time to state their views/opinions. The types of strategies they used to work in collaboration with each other are really thought out and is shown to be imperative, even the small things like being sure to shake each others hands before taking the bench/working in conference. These types of strategies represent the value that they all hold to this position.

Behind the Scenes of Sandra Day O'Connor's First Days on the Supreme Court
One new thing that I learned about the U.S. Supreme Court is Opinion Writing. I was unaware that once a case has been decided, there must be an opinion piece backing up their decisions to go with it and I found this very interesting. One member of the majority writes it and if there is a justice who disagrees has the right to write their own dissenting from the decision. I found this to only be interesting, but imperative to have in our Judicial System, because it allows future judges to go back and review past reasonings for their decision on specific cases which can help judges decide IF the case is similar by principal.